Chapter 3

“Sweet as from blest voices uttering joy,”

had first allured his attention. It seemed to inclose a particular apartment. Its lattices were composed of the aromatic verani, whose property it is, to allay a feverish heat; and which, by being dashed by the waters of an artificial fountain, bestowed a fragrant coolness on the air. A light gleamed through one of the lattices, and the Missionary found no difficulty in penetrating, with his eye, into the interior of the room. He perceived that the light proceeded from a lamp, suspended from the centre of the ceiling, which was painted with figures taken from the Indian mythology. Beneath the lamp stood a small altar, whose ivory steps were strewed with flowers and with odours.

The idol, to whom the offerings were made, wore the form and air of a child: by his cany bow, his arrows tipt with Indian blossoms, the Missionary recognised him as the lovely twin of the Grecian Cupid; while, before her tutelar deity, knelt Luxima, playing on the Indian lyre, which she accompanied with a hymn to Camdeo. The sounds, wild and tender, died upon her lips, and she seemed to

“Feed on thoughts,Which voluntary mov’d harmonious numbers.”

She then arose, and poured incense into a small vase, in which the leaves of the sacred sami-tree burnt with a blue phosphoric light: then bowing to the altar, she said, “Glory be to Camdeo; him bywhom Brahma and Vishnu are filled with rapturous delight; for the true object of glory is an union with our beloved: that object really exists; but, without it, both heart and soul would have no existence.”

As she pronounced this impassioned invocation, a tender and ardent enthusiasm diffused itself over her countenance: her eyelids gently closed, and soft and delightful visions seemed to absorb her soul and feelings.

The Missionary hastened away, and rapidly descended the mound. He had seen, he had heard, too much: even the very air he breathed communicated its fatal softness to his imagination, and tended to enervate his mind. A short time back, andthe Indian had shared with him a feeling as pure and as devotional as it was sublime and awful: he found her now involved in idolatrous worship. Hitherto a chaste and vestal reserve had consecrated her look, and guarded her words; now a tender and impassioned languor was distinguished in both: and the virgin priestess, the widowed bride, who had hitherto appeared exclusively consecrated to the service of that Heaven she imaged upon earth, seemed now only alive to the existence of feelings in which Heaven could have no share.

For whose sake was this tender invocation made? lived there an object worthy to steal between the vestal Prophetess and her paradise ofIndra? He recalled her look and air, and thought that as he had last beheld her in all the grace and blandishment of beauty and emotion, she resembled less the future foundress of a religious order, than one of the lovely Rajini, or female Passions, which, in the poetical mythology of her religion, were supposed to preside over the harmony of the spheres, and to steal their power over the hearts of men by sounds which breathed of heaven. But he discarded the seducing image, as little consonant to the tone of his mind, while he involuntarily repeated, “The true object of soul and mind is the glory of a union with our beloved;” until, suddenly recollecting the doctrines of mystic love, and that, even in his own pure faith, there were sects who addressed theirhomage to Heaven in terms of human passion[24], Luxima stood redeemed in his mind: for, whatever glow of imagination warms the worship of colder regions, he was aware that, in India, the ardent gratitude of created spirits was wont to ascend to the Creator in expressions of the most fervid devotion; that the tender eloquence of mystic piety too frequently assumed the character of human feelings; and that the faint line, which sometimes separated the language of love from that of religion, was too delicate to be perceptible but to the pure in spirit and devout in mind. He was himselfof a rigid principle and a stoical order, and the language of his piety, like its sentiment, was lofty and sublime. Yet he was not intolerant towards the soft and pious weaknesses of others; and he now believed that the ardent enthusiasm of the lovely Heathen was a sure presage of the zeal and faith of the future Christian.

The little hills which encircled the vale where chance had fixed the residence of the Nuncio, seemed now to him as a magic boundary, whose line it was impossible to pass; and during the day which succeeded to that of Luxima’s visit, he wandered near the path which led to her pavilion, or returned to his grotto, to caress the fawn she had committed to his care; but always with a feeling of doubt and anxiety, as if expectation and disappointment divided his mind; for he thought it probable, that the humanity of Luxima might lead her, now her first prejudices were vanquished, again to visit him, to inquire into the state of his own slight wound, or to see her convalescent favourite. Once he believed he heard her voice: he flew to the mouth of the grotto, but it was only the sweet soft whistle of the packimar, the Indian bird-catcher, as he hung, almost suspended, from the projection of a neighbouring rock, pointing his long and slender lines tipped with lime to the gaudy plumage of the pungola, who builds her nest in the recesses of the highest cliffs; or lured to his nets, with imitative note, the lovely and social magana, the red-breast of the East. Again he heard a light and feathery foot-fall: he thought it must be Luxima’s, but he only perceived at a distance, a slender youth bending his rapid way, assisted by a slight and brilliant spear; and by his jama of snowy white, and crimson sash and turban, he recognised the useful and swift Hircarah, the faithful courier of some Indian rajah or Mogul omrah.

The sun, as it faded from the horizon, withdrew with it, hopes scarcely understood by him who indulged them. Hitherto his mind had received every impression, and combined every idea, through a religious influence;and even the Indian, in all the splendour of her beauty, her youth, and her enthusiasm, had stolen on his imagination solely through the medium of his zeal. Until this moment, woman was to him a thing unguessed at and unthought of. In Europe and in India, the few who had met his eye were of that class in society to whom delicacy of form was so seldom given, by whom the graces of the mind were so seldom possessed. Hitherto he had only stood between them and Heaven: they had approached him penitent and contrite, faded by time, or chilled by remorse; and he had felt towards them as saints are supposed to feel, who see the errors from which they are themselves exempt. His experience,therefore, afforded him no parallel for the character and form of the Priestess. A rapturous vision had, indeed, given him such forms of heaven to gaze on; but on earth he had seen nothing to which he could assimilate, or by which compare her.

Yet, in reflecting on her charms, he only considered them as rendering her more worthy to be converted, and more capable of converting. He remembered that the pure light of Christianity owed its first diffusion to the influence of woman; and that the blood of martyred vestals had flowed to attest their zeal and faith, with no inadequate effect. This consideration, therefore, sanctified the solicitude which Luxima awakened in his mind; and anxiously to expect her presence, and profoundly to feel her absence, were, he believed, sentiments which emanated from his religious zeal, and not emotions belonging to his selfish feeling.

On the evening of the following day, he repaired to the altar at the confluence of the streams, accompanied by the fawn, which was now sufficiently recovered to be restored to its mistress. His heart throbbed with a violence new to its sober pulse, when he perceived Luxima standing beneath the shadowy branches of a cannella-alba, or cinnamon-tree, looking like the deity of the stream, in whose lucid wave her elegant and picturesque formwas reflected. The bright buds of the water-loving lotos were twined round her arms and bosom: she seemed fresh from her morning worship, and the enthusiasm of devotion still threw its light upon her features; but when the Missionary stood before her, this devotional expression was lost in the splendour of her illuminated countenance. The pure blood mantling to her cheek gradually suffused her whole face with radiant blushes: a tender shyness hung upon her downcast eyes; and a smiling softness, a bashful pleasure, finely blended with a religious dignity, involved her whole person. There was so much of the lustre of beauty, the freshness of youth, the charm of sentiment, the mystery of devotion, andthe spell of grace, in her look, her air, her attitude, that the Missionary stood rapt in silent contemplation of her person, and wondering that one so fit for heaven should yet remain on earth.

The fawn, which had burst from the string of twisted grass by which the Missionary led it, now sprung to the feet of her mistress, who lavished on her favourite the most infantile caresses; and this little scene of re-union gave time to the Missionary to recover the reserved, dignity of the apostolic Nuncio, which the abruptly awakened feelings of the man had put to flight. “Daughter,” he said, “health and peace to thee and thine! May the light of the true religioneffuse its lustre o’er thy soul, as the light of the sun now irradiates thy form!”

As he spoke a language so similar to that in which the devotions of the heathen were wont to flow, he touched, by a natural association of ideas, on the chord of her enthusiasm; and thrice bowing to the sun, she replied, “I adore that effulgent power, in whose lustre I now shine, and of which I am myself an irradiated manifestation.”

The Missionary started; his blood ran cold as he thus found himself so intimately associated in the worship of an infidel; while, as if suddenly inspired, he raised his hands and eyes to heaven, and, prostrateon the earth, prayed aloud, and with the eloquence of angels, for her conversion.

Luxima, gazing and listening, stood rapt in wonder and amazement, in awe and admiration. She heard her name tenderly pronounced, and inseparably connected with supplication to Heaven in her behalf: she beheld tears, and listened to sighs, of which she alone was the object, and which were made as offerings to the suppliant’s God, that she might embrace a mode of belief, to whose existence, until now, she was almost a stranger. Professing, herself, a religion which unites the most boundless toleration to the most obstinate faith; the most perfect indifference to proselytism,to the most unvanquishable conviction of its own supreme excellence; she could not, even remotely, comprehend the pious solicitude for her conversion, which the words and emotion of the Christian betrayed; but from his prayer, and the exhortations he addressed to her, she understood, that she had been the principal object of his visiting Cashmire, and that her happiness, temporal and eternal, was the subject of his ardent hopes and eloquent supplications.

This conviction sunk deep into her sensible and grateful heart, which was formed for the exercise of all those feelings which raise and purify humanity; and it softened, without conquering, the profound and firm-rootedprejudices of her mind; and when the Monk arose, she seated herself on a shelving bank, and motioned to him to place himself beside her. He obeyed, and a short pause ensued, which the eloquent and fixed looks of the Indian alone filled up; at last, she said, in accent of emotion, “Christian, thou hast named me an idolatress; what means that term, which must sure be evil, since, when thou speakest it, methinks thou dost almost seem to shudder.”

“I call thee idolatress,” he returned, “because, even now, thou didst offer to the sun that worship, which belongs alone to Him who said, ‘Let there be light; and there was light.’ ”—“I adore the sun,”said Luxima, with enthusiasm, “as the great visible luminary; the emblem of that incomparably greater Light, which can alone illumine our souls.”—“Ah!” he replied, “at least encourage this first principle of true faith, this pure idea of an essential Cause, this sentiment of the existence of a God, which is the sole idea innate to the mind of man.”—“I would adore Him in his works,” replied the Priestess; “but when I would contemplate him in his essence, I am dazzled; I am overwhelmed; my soul shrinks back, affrighted at its own presumption. I feel only the mighty interval which separates us from the Deity; overpowered, I sink to the earth, abashed and humbled in my conscious insignificance.”

“Such,” said the Missionary, “are the timid feelings of a soul, struggling with error, and lost in darkness. It is by the operation of divine grace only, that we are enabled to contemplate the Creator in himself; it is by becoming a Christian that that divine grace only can be obtained!”

Luxima shuddered as he spoke. “No,” she said; “the feeling which would prompt me to meet the presence of my Creator; to image his nature to my mind; to form a distinct idea of his being, power, and attributes, would overpower me with fear and with confusion.”

As she spoke, a religious awe seemed to take possession of hersoul. She trembled; her countenance was agitated; and she repeated rapidly the creed of the faith she professed, prostrating herself on the earth, in sign of the profound submission and humility of her heart. The Missionary was touched by a devotion so pure and so ardent; and, when she had ceased to pray, he would have raised her from the earth; but, warm in all the revived feelings of her religion, her prejudices rekindled with her zeal; she shrunk from an assistance she would have now deemed it sacrilegious to accept, and, with a crimson blush, she haughtily exclaimed, “As the shadow of the pariah defiles the bosom of the stream over which it hangs its gloom, so is the descendant of Brahma profaned bythe touch of one who is neither of the same cast nor of the same sex.”

The Missionary stood confused and overwhelmed by sentiments so incongruous, and by principles so discordant, as those which seemed to blend and to unite themselves in the character and mind of this extraordinary enthusiast. At one moment, the purest adoration of the Supreme Being, and the most sublime conceptions of his attributes, betrayed themselves in her eloquent words; in the next, she appeared wholly involved in the wildest superstitions of her idolatrous nation. Now she hung upon his words with an obvious delight, which seemed mingled with conviction; and now she shrunk from his approach, as ifhe belonged to some species condemned of Heaven. To argue with her was impossible; for there was an incoherence in her ideas, which was not to be reconciled, or replied to. To listen to her was dangerous; for the eloquence of genius and feeling, and the peculiar tenets of her sect, gave a force to her errors, and a charm to her look, which weakened even the zeal of conversion in the priest, in proportion as it excited the admiration of the man. Determined, therefore, no longer to confide in himself, nor to trust to human influence on a soul so bewildered, so deep in error, the Missionary drew from his bosom the scriptural volume, translated into the dialect of the country, and, presenting it to her, said, “Daughter,thou seest before thee a man, who has subdued the passions incidental to his nature; a man, who has trampled beneath his feet the joys of youth, of rank, of wealth; who has abandoned his country and his friends, his ease and his pleasure, and crossed perilous seas, and visited distant regions, and endured pain, and vanquished obstacles, that others might share with him that bright futurity, reserved for those who believe, and follow the divine precepts which this sacred volume contains. Judge, then, of its purity and influence, by the sacrifices it enables man to make. Take it; and may Heaven pour into thy heart its celestial grace, that, as thou readest, thou mayst edify and believe!”

Luxima took the book, gazing silently on him who presented it. His countenance, the tone of his voice, seemed no less to affect her senses, than the solemnity of his address to impress and touch her mind. The Missionary moved slowly away; he had restored his mind to its wonted holy calm; he wished not again to encounter the eyes, or listen to the accents of the Indian. If she were not influenced by the inspired writings he had put into her hand, “neither would she by one who should descend from heaven.”

He proceeded on, nor glanced one look behind him; and, though he heard a light foot-fall near him, yet his eyes were still fixed upon his rosary. At last a sweet and lowvoice pronounced the name of “Father!” The tender epithet sunk to his heart: he paused, and Luxima stood beside him. He turned his eyes on her for a moment, but suddenly withdrawing them, he fastened their glances on the earth. “Daughter,” he said, “what wouldst thou?”—“Thy forgiveness!” she replied timidly: “I shrunk from thy approach, and therefore I fear to have offended thee; for haply the women of thy nation offend not their gods, when men of other casts approach them, and they forbid it not.”

“The God whom they adore,” he said, “judges not by the act alone, but by the motive. The pure in heart commit no evil deeds; and,perhaps, there are women, even of thy nation, daughter, who would deem the presence of a Christian minister no profanation to their purity.”

“But I,” she returned, with majesty, “I am a sacerdotal woman! a consecrated vestal, and a guarded Priestess! And know, Christian, that the life of a vestal should resemble the snow-buds of the ipomea, when, hid in their virgin calix, the sun’s ray has never kissed their leaves. Yet, lest thou part from me in anger, accept this sacrifice.”

As she spoke, she averted her eyes. A deep blush coloured her cheek; and, trembling between an habitual prejudice and a natural feeling, sheextended to the Missionary hands of a pure and exquisite beauty, which never before had known a human pressure. The Missionary took them in silence. He believed that the rapid pulsation of his heart arose from the triumphant feeling excited by the conquest of a fatal prejudice; but when he recollected also, that this was the first time the hands of a woman were ever folded in his own, he started, and suddenly dropt them; while Luxima, animated by a devotional fervour, clasped them on her bosom, and said, in a low and tender voice, “Father, thou who art thyself pure, and holy as a Brahmin’s thought, pray for me to thy gods; I will pray for thee to mine!” Then turning her eyes for a moment on him, she pronounced theIndian salaam, and, with a soft sigh and pensive look, moved slowly away.

The Missionary pursued her with his glance, until the thickening shade of a group of mangoostan-trees concealed her from his view. Her sigh seemed still to breathe on his ear, with a deathless echo: at last, he abruptly started, and walked rapidly away, as if, in leaving a spot where all breathed of her, he should leave the idea of her beauty and her softness behind him. He endeavoured to form an abstract idea of her character, independent of her person; to consider the mind distinct from the woman; to remember only the prejudice he had vanquished, and not the hands he had touched; butstill he felt them in his own, soft and trembling; and still he sought to lose, in the subject of his mission, the object of his imagination. He endeavoured to banish her look and her sigh from his memory; and to recall the last short, but extraordinary conversation he had held with her. He perceived that a pure system of natural religion was innate in her sublime and contemplative mind; but the images which personified the attributes of Deity, in her national faith, had powerfully fastened on her ardent imagination, and blended their influence with all the habits, the feelings, and the expressions of her life. The splendid mythology of the Brahminical religion was eminently calculated to seduce a fancy so warm; andthe tenets of her sect, to harmonize with the tenderness of a heart so sensible. But a life so innocent as that she led, and a mind so pure as that she possessed, rendered her equally capable to feel and to cherish that abstract and awful sense of a First Cause, without which all religion must be cold and baseless.

This consciousness of a predisposition to truth on her part, with the daily conquest of those prejudices which might prevent its promulgation on his, gave new vigour to his hopes, and, in the anticipation of so illustrious a convert, he already found the sacrifices and labours of his enterprise repaid.

THE END OF VOL. I.

S. Gosnell, Printer, Little Queen Street, London.

FOOTNOTES:[1]The Jesuits, being charged with fraudulent practices, in endeavouring to persuade the Indians that the Brahminical and Christian doctrines differed not essentially, were openly condemned by the Franciscans; which laid the foundation of those long and violent contests, decided by Innocent the Tenth, in favour of the Franciscans.[2]The misfortune of Portugal being united to the kingdom of Spain after the death of Cardinal Henry, uncle to the King Sebastian, gave a terrible blow to the Portuguese power in the Indies.—Guzon, Histoire des Indes Orientales.[3]The power of that formidable ecclesiastic, the Inquisitor General, is very terrible; and extends to persons of all ranks—the Viceroy, Archbishop, and his vicar, excepted.—SeeHamilton’sNew Account of the East Indies.[4]Dara having advanced beyond the river Bea, took possession of Lahore; giving his army time to breathe; in that city, he employed himself in levying troops and in collecting the imperial revenue—Dow’s History of Hindostan, vol. iii. p. 274.[5]“Autre fois les Jesuites avoient un établissement dans cette ville, et remplissoient leurs fonctions sacrés, et offroient aux yeux des Mahometans et des Gentiles, la pomp de leurs fêtes.”—Bernier.[6]Monsieur de Thevenot speaks of a convent of religious Hindus, at Lahore: they have a general, provincial, and other superiors; they make vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty; they live on alms, and have lay brothers to beg for them; they eat but once a day; the chief tenet of their order is, to avoid doing to others, what they would not themselves wish to endure; they suffer injuries with patience and do not return a blow; and they are forbidden even tolookon women.[7]A Hindu considers all the distinctions and privileges of his cast, as belonging to him by an incommunicable right; and to convert, or be converted, are ideas equally repugnant to the principles, most deeply rooted in his mind; nor can either the Catholic or Protestant Missionaries in India, boast of having overcome those prejudices, except among a few of the lower casts, or of such as have lost their caste altogether.—Voyages aux Indes par M.Sonnebat, tom. i. p. 58.[8]Gazettes de la cour de Delhi, des nouvelles publiques qui marquent, jour par jour, et non dans ce stile ampoullé qu’on reproche aux Orientaux, ce qui se passe d’importante à la cour et dans les provinces—ces sont de gazettes repandues dans toute l’empire.—Anquetil du Perron, p. 47.[9]A ceremony similar to that of confirmation in the Catholic church.[10]From the time that they assume the dsandam, they are called the Brahmasaris, or children of Brahma.[11]The “Raga Mala,” or Necklace of Melody, contains a highly poetical description of the Ragas and their attendant nymphs.[12]See “Duties of a faithful Widow,” translated from the Shanscrit, by H. Colebrook, Esq.[13]“Certainly,” says De Bernier, “if one may judge of the beauty of the sacred women by that of the common people, met with in the streets, they must be very beautiful.” P. 96“The beauties of Cashmire, being born in a more northern climate, and in a purer air, retain their charms as long, at least, as any European women.”—Grosse, p. 239.[14]The women are so sacred in India, that even the common soldiery leave them unmolested in the midst of slaughter and desolation.—Dow, History of Hindoostan, vol. iii. p. 10.[15]“The process of the saint’s canonization,” says the biographer of Xavier, “makes mention of four dead persons, to whom God restored life at this time by the ministry of his servant.”[16]“Cet excès de chaleur vient de la situation de ces hautes montagnes qui se trouvent au nord de la route, arrêtent les vents frais, reflechissent les rayons du soleil sur les voyageurs, et laissent dans la campagne un ardeur brulante.”—Bernier.[17]“Il (Bernier) n’eut plutôt monté ce qu’il nomme l’affreuse muraille du monde (parce-qu’il regard Cashmire un paradis terrestre), c’est à dire une haute montagne noire et pelée, qu’en descendant sur l’autre face il sentoit un air plus frais et plus temperé: mais rien ne se surprise tant, dans ces montagnes, que de se trouvir, tout d’un coup, transporté des Indes en Europe.”—Histoire Generale des Voyages, livre ii. p. 301.[18]According to Forster, the utmost extent of this delicious vale from S.E. to N.W. is scarcely 90 miles; other travellers assert, it to be but 40 miles from east to west and 25 from north to south.[19]So called by the Hindus and by the ancient annals of India; but Bernier and Forster denominate the capital and its district by the same name as the kingdom or province.[20]The confluence of streams is sacred to the followers of Brahma.[21]“L’Eternel, absorbé dans la contemplation de son essence, resolut dans la plenitude des tems de former des êtres participants de son essence et de sa beatitude.”—Shastar, traduit en François.[22]The Goddess of Nature in the Indian mythology.[23]“Il ne faut à ces nations que des nourritures rafraichissantes et pures; la nature leur a prodigue des forêts de citroniers, d’oranges, de figuiers, de palmiers, de cocotiers, et des campagnes couvertes de riz.”—Essai sur les Mœ et l’Esprit des Nations.Voltaire.[24]It is unnecessary to mention the well-known doctrine of quietism, embraced by the Archbishop of Cambray.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]The Jesuits, being charged with fraudulent practices, in endeavouring to persuade the Indians that the Brahminical and Christian doctrines differed not essentially, were openly condemned by the Franciscans; which laid the foundation of those long and violent contests, decided by Innocent the Tenth, in favour of the Franciscans.

[2]The misfortune of Portugal being united to the kingdom of Spain after the death of Cardinal Henry, uncle to the King Sebastian, gave a terrible blow to the Portuguese power in the Indies.—Guzon, Histoire des Indes Orientales.

[3]The power of that formidable ecclesiastic, the Inquisitor General, is very terrible; and extends to persons of all ranks—the Viceroy, Archbishop, and his vicar, excepted.—SeeHamilton’sNew Account of the East Indies.

[4]Dara having advanced beyond the river Bea, took possession of Lahore; giving his army time to breathe; in that city, he employed himself in levying troops and in collecting the imperial revenue—Dow’s History of Hindostan, vol. iii. p. 274.

[5]“Autre fois les Jesuites avoient un établissement dans cette ville, et remplissoient leurs fonctions sacrés, et offroient aux yeux des Mahometans et des Gentiles, la pomp de leurs fêtes.”—Bernier.

[6]Monsieur de Thevenot speaks of a convent of religious Hindus, at Lahore: they have a general, provincial, and other superiors; they make vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty; they live on alms, and have lay brothers to beg for them; they eat but once a day; the chief tenet of their order is, to avoid doing to others, what they would not themselves wish to endure; they suffer injuries with patience and do not return a blow; and they are forbidden even tolookon women.

[7]A Hindu considers all the distinctions and privileges of his cast, as belonging to him by an incommunicable right; and to convert, or be converted, are ideas equally repugnant to the principles, most deeply rooted in his mind; nor can either the Catholic or Protestant Missionaries in India, boast of having overcome those prejudices, except among a few of the lower casts, or of such as have lost their caste altogether.—Voyages aux Indes par M.Sonnebat, tom. i. p. 58.

[8]Gazettes de la cour de Delhi, des nouvelles publiques qui marquent, jour par jour, et non dans ce stile ampoullé qu’on reproche aux Orientaux, ce qui se passe d’importante à la cour et dans les provinces—ces sont de gazettes repandues dans toute l’empire.—Anquetil du Perron, p. 47.

[9]A ceremony similar to that of confirmation in the Catholic church.

[10]From the time that they assume the dsandam, they are called the Brahmasaris, or children of Brahma.

[11]The “Raga Mala,” or Necklace of Melody, contains a highly poetical description of the Ragas and their attendant nymphs.

[12]See “Duties of a faithful Widow,” translated from the Shanscrit, by H. Colebrook, Esq.

[13]“Certainly,” says De Bernier, “if one may judge of the beauty of the sacred women by that of the common people, met with in the streets, they must be very beautiful.” P. 96“The beauties of Cashmire, being born in a more northern climate, and in a purer air, retain their charms as long, at least, as any European women.”—Grosse, p. 239.

[13]“Certainly,” says De Bernier, “if one may judge of the beauty of the sacred women by that of the common people, met with in the streets, they must be very beautiful.” P. 96

“The beauties of Cashmire, being born in a more northern climate, and in a purer air, retain their charms as long, at least, as any European women.”—Grosse, p. 239.

[14]The women are so sacred in India, that even the common soldiery leave them unmolested in the midst of slaughter and desolation.—Dow, History of Hindoostan, vol. iii. p. 10.

[15]“The process of the saint’s canonization,” says the biographer of Xavier, “makes mention of four dead persons, to whom God restored life at this time by the ministry of his servant.”

[16]“Cet excès de chaleur vient de la situation de ces hautes montagnes qui se trouvent au nord de la route, arrêtent les vents frais, reflechissent les rayons du soleil sur les voyageurs, et laissent dans la campagne un ardeur brulante.”—Bernier.

[17]“Il (Bernier) n’eut plutôt monté ce qu’il nomme l’affreuse muraille du monde (parce-qu’il regard Cashmire un paradis terrestre), c’est à dire une haute montagne noire et pelée, qu’en descendant sur l’autre face il sentoit un air plus frais et plus temperé: mais rien ne se surprise tant, dans ces montagnes, que de se trouvir, tout d’un coup, transporté des Indes en Europe.”—Histoire Generale des Voyages, livre ii. p. 301.

[18]According to Forster, the utmost extent of this delicious vale from S.E. to N.W. is scarcely 90 miles; other travellers assert, it to be but 40 miles from east to west and 25 from north to south.

[19]So called by the Hindus and by the ancient annals of India; but Bernier and Forster denominate the capital and its district by the same name as the kingdom or province.

[20]The confluence of streams is sacred to the followers of Brahma.

[21]“L’Eternel, absorbé dans la contemplation de son essence, resolut dans la plenitude des tems de former des êtres participants de son essence et de sa beatitude.”—Shastar, traduit en François.

[22]The Goddess of Nature in the Indian mythology.

[23]“Il ne faut à ces nations que des nourritures rafraichissantes et pures; la nature leur a prodigue des forêts de citroniers, d’oranges, de figuiers, de palmiers, de cocotiers, et des campagnes couvertes de riz.”—Essai sur les Mœ et l’Esprit des Nations.Voltaire.

[24]It is unnecessary to mention the well-known doctrine of quietism, embraced by the Archbishop of Cambray.

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